


Not Ready to Die (Not Yet), Pull Me Out

by realityisiron



Series: Train Wreck [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Season 2 spoilers, This isn't happy, season 2 finale spoilers, shiro angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 19:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11516091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realityisiron/pseuds/realityisiron
Summary: What Shiro hadn’t told any of them was that when a lion had settled in his bones, death had settled right beside her.- - - - -Shiro being the Black Paladin had some unfortunate implications.





	Not Ready to Die (Not Yet), Pull Me Out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [eye to eye, thigh to thigh (i let go)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11462325) by [redlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight). 



> So my idea for the fic itself came from listening to "Trainwreck" by James Arthur for roughly four hours. I may or may not be one of those people that plays one song on repeat for days on end. Whoops. There are actually a surprising amount of James Arthur songs that give me lots of Shiro feels but if anyone's got any other suggestions to give me some variety on my Shiro playlist I am open for suggestions.
> 
> Enjoy!

What Shiro hadn’t told any of them was that when a lion had settled in his bones, death had settled right beside her.

He talked like he was destined to die because he _was_. Karma remembered all his black humor, every punch line at his life’s expense, and saw it to fruition.

Keith hated it, didn’t want to be named second-in-command, heir to a too-large throne. “Stop talking like that. You’re gonna make it.”

No, he wasn’t. Shiro knew that.

The Lions were something impossibly different from everything else. They were the threads of the universe tucked beneath celestial skin, strung through bolts and arcs of crackling energy. The Lions were defenders of the universe because they had been welded with the hot and cold yet ever inky dark between stars, the rainbows in white light, the gravities of a million beings. They were meant to press tight and snug and warm and safe.

Druid energy was the gaping black hole that couldn’t be satisfied, a heat that couldn’t even meld together – too hot to do anything less than touch (and _burst_ what it touched), sharp and broken hate that ripped through walls and throats and skulls, blood that froze and boiled without cause, disease that slept until it tore it all apart. It was meant to shred and unwind. And then devour.

If they ever joined they would press and pull and press and pull; whatever was caught in the middle unimagined and recreated, turned unrecognizable, unworkable, impossible.

Shiro did just that the moment the black lion pressed against his mind.

That was when Shiro knew.

 

Her apology was a warm rumble, thunderous and all-encompassing. She tried to push Shiro away, tried to tell him how she acquiesced to this decision. All the gods that life had ever invented told her to cradle him in the cockpit and let him merge with her, become her paladin, but she knew what it would cost him. She would not lose him. She would not tear him apart.

She **couldn’t** take him.

 _“Let me die.”_ He’d said it then to the old and empty air of the cockpit. But he’d also said it to an ancient beast, a formidable goddess, a towering fortress of a being he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

And yet his three painfully human words had her crashing around him – desperate images and waves of emotions and whirling sensations, grasping at ways to tell him what he was asking.

The Black Paladin was the head, but it was also the torso. The heart that pounded, sending blood to all the rest. The lungs that breathed will into its brethren. The ribs that protected that precious connection. They were the crossroads, and when Voltron was together they could roar with blood and fire and life.

But the Black Paladin was the center of the disconnection. Every time the paladins broke away, the Black Paladin broke four times, harsh and fresh and new and startling.

To be a Black Paladin riddled with druid venom…

It would be uninventing emotion itself. **Each and every time**.

She refused to do this to him.

Couldn’t (could, but desperately didn’t want to) do this to him.

Oh but Shiro was nothing if not determined. Survival was riddled in his skin, had seeped into his blood right along that arm’s wretched magic. His arm and this lion would rip him apart and rebuild him rushed and trembling again and again until he fell apart at the veins and corded scars. But he hadn’t fought to be turned down here, to watch Voltron remain separate and broken.

He wrapped his fingers around the controls.

She curled around his heart.

He would die (too soon) – he would die cradled in her jaws, jaws of death in the end – but until then she would memorize the silence between his heartbeats, the horrors on the backs of his eyelids, the fragile warmth high in his chest every time he thought of those other paladins.

They were young. He was young. They were all so achingly **young**.

She wanted to know if he would ever tell them of the contract he had signed when he pulled her into his soul.

_No. We have the universe to save. They have so much more to worry about. I’m a monster now. Let me do this at least._

Was he not a part of their universe? Was he not worth their worry?

_I know what I’m worth._

She had often tried to pry his mind open for her, to see further, to know what his self-determined worth would be.

And every time she found nothing.

 

There came a day where he finally grasped the bayard – hers, **his**. He pressed it to her nerves with such hope, a blinding flicker in her dark.

No. She couldn’t let this continue.

_What are you doing?_

The bayard was too much, too strong a connection between her magic and the venom in his arm. She could feel his life in pieces, grasping at thin air and unraveling.

No.

She was making the call. She would save him from himself.

_Black, what’re you-_

She was pulling him out.

 

The black lion was hauled into the hangar.

“Shiro? _Shiro?_ ”

They found nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm a monster who can't just seem to write a simple short one-shot so even though I was super good and kept this short... I suddenly felt the need to write more so anticipate a few more parts. 
> 
> Anyway, hey, I post Voltron fanart and my fanfic writing struggles and reblog a whole bunch of Voltron stuff at [my tumblr](https://realityisiron.tumblr.com/). So if you enjoyed what you read come say hi to me there. :)
> 
> Thanks for reading.


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